All of the life of Nigeria is a continuous effort at portraying the confusing image of the ‘Hausaman’ as everything negative — the only problem of the federation. Everything associated with the northern Hausaman is seen and portrayed as backward and detrimental to the development of Nigeria.

For over fifty years, the campaign, cutting across the media and literature, is only getting cruder. The recent post-presidential election violence offered a fertile opportunity, especially for the Lagos-based press to embark on the climax of the attacks. Media, with its peculiarities, may be excused if those employed by a publisher do only his clear and supposed biddings. Journalists are human beings and their opinions on issues may be influenced by what the Indian philosopher Amartya Sen called positional limitations. Sometimes it is necessary to keep on ignoring the parochial opinions of the Lagos press, because their views on national issues always expose their shallow grasp of Nigeria and its complications.

Writers are supposed to be inches or miles above the ordinary journalist who may even turn out to be an opportunistic hack. V.S. Naipaul was of the view that, “Good or valuable writing is more than a technical skill; it depends on a certain moral wholeness in the writer.” Nigerian writers by choice took to their regional and ethnic wholeness. Wole Soyinka, the winner of the Nobel Literature prize, was predictable in The Man Died, Ibadan and You Must Set Forth at Dawn, hailing Obafemi Awolowo, making him to look like the perfect human being, and casting all northern leaders and their associates in his own prejudiced image. In doing this, at least, Soyinka was consistent all his life. Particularly, he held onto castigating Sardauna like a game, like a child dazzled by a new toy.

If the first generation of Nigerian writers chose to turn literature into an ethnic utility, they can be excused because of the way they chose to be treated by history in Nigeria’s early years. However, even the new generation writers, it seems, choose not to be different.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a talented young writer, seems to have taken over from where early writers stopped. She won many awards and she is a good writer of fiction. Her first book, Purple Hibiscus x-rayed political instability and economic difficulties faced by postcolonial Nigeria. Her second work of fiction, Half of a Yellow Sun, aptly placed her in the bandwagon.

Nigeria’s civil war was fought as a result of an attempt by Igbo military officers, supported by their intellectuals, to secede and form the tribal Republic of Biafra. Everyone has his own way of looking at the factors that led to the war and its consequences. In Half of a Yellow Sun, the writer delved into the history of the civil war with a touch of casuistry. In her portrayal of Igbos, she was humane and honest, but in doing same about others she was consumed by what she is. At a point in the novel she was bare; “…the evil of those Muslim Hausa people…those black-as-he goats Northerners, those dirty cattle rearers with jigger infested feet”.  The novelist portrayed northern Nigeria as a place where “Muslim students were always demonstrating about one thing or the other, after all, and harassing people who are Western dressed”.

Nigerian writers seem to be obsessed with dehumanizing those they call Hausa people and reducing them ‘to a metaphorical extension of the dark and dangerous’. That, ironically, was the focal point of Chinua Achebe’s sticking criticism of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Nigerian writers have devoted themselves to a ‘cause’, therefore there is no way they can avoid bigotry, skewed caricature and stereotyping. Bound by the cause they devote themselves to, they cannot escape falsifying. At the beginning they were engrossed by the impact of colonialism, later they took on the post colonial era. After these periods they seemed to have exhausted all their themes. They are lost, and they therefore find refuge in going back to where they come from.

Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, and Honoré de Balzac helped in propelling England and France to greatness by dint of their criticism of their societies without sentiments. These writers might only be lucky not to have tribes to take as enemies or ancestors to defend. But Nigerian writers were united in pushing the assumption that Hausas are the problem of Nigeria. Of course Hausa people contributed their portion to the mess that is Nigeria today, but that does not mean that Igbos and Yorubas were all through on a saintly pedestal. It seems the famous Kenyan anti-corruption czar, John Githongo, was addressing Nigerian writers when he said:  “Evil lies dormant, like a smouldering ember, in the human soul, and it can be fanned into flame by the most ordinary human passions – the passion for power, for wealth, for a good life for myself and my family.”

Writing was supposed to be a noble calling; it should motivate self examination for a nation. Hausa people might be the problem of Nigeria, but they can’t all make the country mediocre, they might have collaborators in others. Nigerian literature has been deprived of that character who is a Nigerian, of every tribe, and is corrupt selfish and backward. Nigerian writers channel much of their creativity to tribal romantics and other mean identities, or petty issues that dazzle others about Africa and its many inferiorities.

Aravind Adiga, is a young Indian writer whose work and inspirations show what writers should be giving attention to. India is more complex than Nigeria, and Adiga is an Indian. He sees his country realistically; detaching himself from the trappings destiny squared him into. In his great novel The White Tiger he held a mirror unto the Indian society, pointing out the injustices of the society – at the end giving every Indian of every tribe, caste and religion an opportunity to see from the mirror where he and his identity stand in making India the mess it is.

* Sanusi lives in Abuja.

Editor’s note: The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not in anyway represent those of Media Trust and its employees.